Shayne nodded decisively and got to his feet. “You wouldn’t have any idea where I could reach Buell Renslow?”
“None whatever. He hasn’t put in an appearance here since that first visit after his release from prison about two months ago.”
“Do either of your children know about him?”
“Only vaguely. I’m sure neither of them knows he has been pardoned and is in Miami.”
Shayne thanked him and went out the door. He hurried down the stairs. Out in the fresh salt-tanged air he filled his lungs deeply on the way to his car.
He drove back to Miami and to police headquarters where he went directly to the private office of his old friend, Will Gentry, Miami detective chief.
Chapter Nine: A DIFFERENT ANGLE
Will Gentry was a solid, square-jawed man of fifty. He was issuing orders to two plain-clothes men when Shayne pushed the door open and walked in. He squinched grizzled eyebrows at the redhead and ended the interview with his subordinates by growling:
“Bring them both in and I don’t give a damn how you do it. Mother of God, do I have to draw you a picture for every pinch I want made?”
The officers saluted stiffly and went out. Gentry chewed on the butt of a sodden cigar and tried ineffectually to light it. After the third attempt he hurled it at a shiny spittoon in one corner. It plopped wetly inside. He hunched his big body forward and rumbled:
“Well, Mike, you seem to have sewed yourself up in a sack this time.”
Shayne nodded and with one toe dragged up a chair. He draped his angular body into it in front of the chief’s scarred desk and agreed, “It looks that way, Will.”
Gentry frowned and his blunt fingers fiddled with a fountain pen lying in front of him. “Painter was in here not more than half an hour ago. He had a book-length telegram he was sending the governor. He wanted my signature on it along with the heads of the Ministerial Alliance and the Civic Betterment League. It pointed out in no uncertain terms that your continued presence in our midst with a private dick’s license was a menace to all the laws in the statutes and to the lives of our law-abiding citizens.”
Shayne lit a cigarette and blew smoke across the scarred surface of Gentry’s desk. “Did you sign it?”
“Nope.”
Shayne said, “Thanks, Will.”
There was a short silence between them, broken by Gentry’s fist thudding down on the desk. “Damn it, Mike, I’ve known you more than ten years. You’re bullheaded and reckless and hell-on-wheels when you get mad and you’ve never given a hang for what anybody thought and you’ve got away with everything but murder in this man’s town, but this time you’re washed up if you don’t pull one out of the hat quick.”
“Am I?”
“Hell, yes. Painter’s got you over a barrel. This isn’t something local that we can hush up. When a private detective murders the client he is hired to protect-that makes headlines from Baltimore to Frisco. It’s like the old one about the man biting the dog. The governor’s going to grab your license so fast it’ll make your head spin around.”
Michael Shayne nodded wearily. “I’ve added it up to the same answer. So, I guess it’s up to me to pull one out of the hat, and I may use Painter’s Panama.”
Gentry shot him a piercing glance. He stopped fiddling with the fountain pen and pulled a blunt black cigar from his vest pocket. Worrying the end of it with his teeth, he grunted, “What’s the straight of it, Mike?”
“You knew Joe Darnell? Hasn’t he been going straight since he did that rap for housebreaking?”
“Maybe. But he was pretty hard up. The way it looks to me is that Joe was casing the joint looking for what he could pick up and the lady hears him and sets up a squawk. Joe jumps her and puts on a little too much pressure.”
“That’s the way it reads,” Shayne admitted grimly. “The papers are making the mistake of listening to Painter, as usual. Joe wasn’t on the prowl. He went in on a ready-made lay-planted and primed for him. He wasn’t worried about any squawk. He was expecting some slight interference to make it look good when the insurance investigators checked up on the missing loot. He wouldn’t have jumped the woman. He didn’t.”
“The hell you say.” Gentry’s mouth fell open and he held the cigar half an inch from it. “Then those notes-all that stuff about him guarding the joint for you-is all that phony?”
“There were notes all right-blackmail-but the rest of the setup is phony as hell. But I can’t prove a word of it. My only out is to turn up the real murderer-Joe’s murderer too, by the way, since he swallowed a slug on account of Thrip triggering in a hurry without taking time for questions when he saw his wife stretched out stiff and Joe in the room.”
Gentry’s graying head bobbed up and down. “I knew it had to be something like that. Anything I can do, Mike?”
“I don’t know,” Shayne told him truthfully. “I’m following two or three leads. Joe could tell us a lot if he could talk. He’d know who went in and came out. You can do this, Will. Every visitor with a criminal record is supposed to register when he hits town. See if a Buell Renslow, pardoned lifer from Colorado, is on your list. He probably isn’t because that’s just another goofy law you can’t enforce.”
“Probably not but we’ll see,” Gentry agreed amiably. He flipped the switch on an interoffice communicator on his desk and gave an order.
“And I’d like to locate a Mona Tabor who gives a Little River post-office box as her address”-Shayne waited while Gentry made a note of it-“and dig up anything you can on Carl Meldrum at the Palace Hotel on the beach,” he ended.
A buzzer sounded. The chief said, “Shoot,” into a phone and listened a minute. He shook his head at Shayne. “Nothing on your ex-con.”
“Then wire Colorado for his mug and prints. And circulate the word among your stoolies that he’s wanted. He shouldn’t be hard to pick up if he runs true to form. Another angle will be Mrs. Thrip’s lawyers. They’ve been paying out monthly sums to Renslow. You might tackle them officially.”
Gentry was scribbling notations on a pad. He grunted with surprise and looked up at the detective. “What’s the connection? How does the con figure?”
“Mrs. Thrip’s brother,” Shayne told him briefly. “I’d like to know where he was between one-thirty and two last night. He made something like a million during that half hour.”
Gentry made his lips into a big O and permitted a whistle to escape him. “Nice work if you can get it. Better than a cop drags down.”
“Or a private dick.” Shayne stood up, tangling his coarse red hair. “Will you hop onto that stuff, Will? And phone any dope over to me. I’ve got one call to make before I land back at my apartment.”
Gentry said, “You bet,” and lifted his heavy hand in farewell as Shayne went out.
The detective’s roadster was parked against the curb outside headquarters where it was marked No Parking — Police. He got in and pulled up to the traffic light on Flagler, waited for it to change, and turned east past the Bade County courthouse.
In front of the First National Bank on the corner of Flagler and Northeast First Avenue he parked in the space reserved for armored cars and went in to cash Leora Thrip’s check into a sheaf of twenties,
Shayne’s next stop was the Miami Daily News tower on Biscayne Boulevard. He went up to the noisy, smoke-filled city room just before press time and found Timothy Rourke relaxed in front of a littered desk in a corner overlooking the bay.
Rourke looked up and waggled a finger at Shayne with portentous gravity. “Naughty, naughty, Michael. There’s an old Hindu proverb that says, He who playeth with fire shall someday find himself in the middle of a mighty conflagration.”
Shayne nodded soberly, pushed back some papers to slouch down on a corner of the reporter’s desk. “That’s rank plagiarism on the Chinese. What’s your first-edition headline, Tim?”
